The Impact of Citizens’ Assemblies on Democratic Resilience: Evidence from the Field






Tim
Wappenhans

Dr. Bernhard
Clemm

Dr. Felix
Hartmann

Prof. Dr. 
Heike Klüver

October 9, 2025

Antidote to Democratic Erosion

Deliberative Events




Can citizens’ assemblies
increase democratic resilience?

State of the Literature

Citizens’ Assemblies

  • promise to strengthen democratic resilience

But

  • limited empirical evidence
    • pre-post design
    • often initiated by researchers
  • normative concerns
    • bypassing representative democratic institutions
    • reproducing inequalities

Preview

What we do

  • large-scale field intervention in Germany
  • moderated citizens’ assemblies w/ MPs, no formal policy recommendations
  • match treated (n=435)
    to control units (n=2,675)

What we find

  • large, robust effects on democratic resilience
    • political trust
    • political efficacy
    • civic engagement
    • reduced susceptibility to
        conspiracy thinking

Theoretical Background

Democratic Resilience

a system’s capacity to withstand, adapt to, or recover from shocks while preserving its principles (Merkel and Lührmann 2021; Holloway and Manwaring 2023)

  • previously focus on macro level (institutional guardrails)
  • we hold resilience to be a citizen capacity
  • attitudinal & behavioral resources preserving democracy in times of crisis and shock
    • climate change
    • pandemics
    • technological disruption

Democratic Resiliencen & Deliberation

Expectations: Citizens’ Democratic Resilience

The Case

Field intervention

Hallo Bundestag

  • MPs deliberating with
    \(\approx\) 25 constituents
  • 6 electoral districts
  • 17 events
  • 8 hours
  • vetted info material
  • national political topics
  • trained mediators
  • deliberating
    \(\neq\) deciding ⚠️

Distinct Design

  • better representation
    • door visits to enforce random selection
  • better deliberation
    • facilitated through trained moderators
    • combination of vertical and horizontal deliberation
  • compatible with democratic institutions
    • perspective getting, no policy proposals

Citizens’ Assembly Structure

Session Activities
Welcome - Welcoming participants
- Ice-breakers
Small Groups (Morning) - Active Listening Exercises
- Discussions and topic selection for the afternoon
Plenary (Pre-Lunch) - Presentation of group topics
- Formation of discussion groups
Small Groups (Afternoon) - Problem definition
- Solution development
Plenary (MP Discussion) - Welcoming MPs
- Group presentations and discussions with MPs
Concluding Session - Feedback and reflections

Treatment

Welcome (Erfurt-Weimar)

Treatment

Icebreakers (Erfurt-Weimar)

Treatment

Topics for afternoon (Erfurt-Weimar)

Treatment

Topic selection (Erfurt-Weimar)

Treatment

Deliberation w/ MPs (Erfurt-Weimar)

Treatment

Deliberation w/ MPs (Erfurt-Weimar)

Analytical Strategy

Matching

Two-sample approach

  • residence register: legally bound to one specific objective
    • two separately drawn random samples
    • closely mimicking NGO’s approach
  • match participants (Xu and Yang 2022)
    • 8 covariats (preregistered)
  • ATT estimated using:

\[ Y_i = \alpha + \beta \text{Treatment}_i + \gamma X_i + \epsilon_i \]

Descriptives

Participation

Results

Main Specification

Results for individual items Appendix

Internal Validity

Results not driven by selection

  • selection
    • exclude 40% of control who wouldn’t participate
  • within-subject changes Appendix
    • mirror matching results
  • sensitivity Appendix
    • confounder needs to be 11x stronger as political interest

Heterogeneity: Vertical Deliberation

Heterogeneity: Vertical Deliberation

Results for individual items Appendix

Takeaway 🥡

Results of Citizens’ Assemblies

Democratic resilience

  • increase trust, efficacy, engagement
  • reduce conspiracy thinking

Ongoing research

  • spillover
  • increase uptake




hu-govlab.de

References

Boulianne, Shelley. 2018. “Mini-Publics and Public Opinion: Two Survey-Based Experiments.” Political Studies 66 (1): 119–36.
Croissant, Aurel, and Lars Lott. 2024. “Democratic Resilience in the Twenty-First Century. Search for an Analytical Framework and Explorative Analysis.” {SSRN} {Scholarly} {Paper}. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4932497.
Fishkin, James S., Valentin Bolotnyy, Joshua Lerner, Alice Siu, and Norman Bradburn. 2024. “Can Deliberation Have Lasting Effects?” American Political Science Review, 1–21.
Fishkin, James S., Alice Siu, Larry Diamond, and Norman Bradburn. 2021. “Is Deliberation an Antidote to Extreme Partisan Polarization? Reflections on ‘America in One Room’.” American Political Science Review 115 (4): 1464–81.
Gastil, John, E Pierre Deess, Phil Weiser, and Jordan Meade. 2008. “Jury Service and Electoral Participation: A Test of the Participation Hypothesis.” The Journal of Politics 70 (2): 351–67.
Grönlund, Kimmo, Maija Setälä, and Kaisa Herne. 2010. “Deliberation and Civic Virtue: Lessons from a Citizen Deliberation Experiment.” European Political Science Review 2 (1): 95–117.
Holloway, Josh, and Rob Manwaring. 2023. “How Well Does ‘Resilience’ Apply to Democracy? A Systematic Review.” Contemporary Politics, January. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569775.2022.2069312.
Krakowski, Krzysztof, Bernhard Clemm von Hohenberg, and Davide Morisi. 2024. “Does School Debating Reduce Vulnerability to Misinformation? A Field Experiment in Poland.”
Merkel, Wolfgang, and Anna Lührmann. 2021. “Resilience of Democracies: Responses to Illiberal and Authoritarian Challenges.” Democratization 28 (5): 869–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2021.1928081.
Xu, Yiqing, and Eddie Yang. 2022. “Hierarchically Regularized Entropy Balancing.” Political Analysis, 1–8.

Appendix

Trust

Back to Main

Internal efficacy

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External efficacy

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Conspiracy thinking

Back to Main

Sensitivity analysis

Back to Internal validity

Within-subject design

Back to Internal validity

Trust

Back to Main

Internal efficacy

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External efficacy

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Civic engagement

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Conspiracy thinking

Back to Main